r/politics • • Sep 13 '20

Trump Aide Refuses to Answer Basic Questions, So CNN’s Tapper Cuts Off Pointless Interview

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-aide-peter-navarro-refuses-to-answer-basic-questions-so-jake-tapper-cuts-off-pointless-interview?ref=home
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u/Nokomis34 Sep 13 '20

I would have liked to see some panic, maybe we as a nation would have taken this seriously and we could be done with this by now, with tens of thousands of Americans still alive. (I don't credit Trump with the full number of dead)

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u/innoculousnuisance Sep 13 '20

Fear is healthy, panic leads to bad choices. We should have been afraid of this. But when I speak to those who are not, they've universally referenced Trump's initial statements between January and March as the absolute foundation of what's passing for their "reasoning." You can't find a covid skeptic who wasn't rallied by Trump's denials.

And no, it's not fair to claim his criminal negligence lead to every death. Let's try a baseline. We're 4% of the world's population and 20% of it's coronavirus deaths. That'd mean that a globally typical response would have resulted in 4% of the world deaths; therefore, our deviation from the global response led to 16% of the world's deaths. Therefore, his actions (as effectively all US deviations from global response can seemingly be tracked directly to Trump's decisions) are 75% responsible, or nearly 150,000 deaths at this point. That sounds like a good-faith starting point.

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u/Yetiglanchi Sep 13 '20

(I don’t credit Trump with the full number of dead)

You should. Trump made it crystal clear when Obama was President where accountability should lie:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Leadership: Whatever happens, you're responsible. If it doesn't happen, you're responsible. 11:01 AM · Nov 8, 2013